On the journey to Hebrew School I often felt nauseated. Some of the nausea might have had something to do with the fact that I hated Hebrew School, but most of it had to do with the vile chariot that transported me there. Twice a week after regular school from the age of 9 until dropping out at 12 I was transported over hill and freeway overpass to my synagogue to learn Hebrew, and apparently the woman who drove me had religious objections to cleaning her car. And, mind you, this is a complaint coming from the individual who proudly (hell yeah!) didn’t wash her car for over a year and a half. Verily I tell you, the amount of crushed Cheetos in her seat cushions could have fed all of Minnesota for about five years, or at least they COULD have had they not been rotting. Hell, I didn’t even know Cheetos were capable of rotting since until that point I hadn’t been entirely convinced that they were actually made out of food.
Shit man, this journey to Hebrew School was so educational. There was more learning going on in the backseat of this car than goes on on The Learning Channel. You know what else goes bad that I didn’t know goes bad? Water. Did you know water has an expiry date? Well it does, and this woman had cases of water in her backseat, and all were expired. And they smelled RANK.
To top it off, I quite vividly remember finding a half-eaten moldy sandwich in that seatback pocket where (in normal cars) you would find crumpled maps, expired coupons and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys from the late 80s, and I feel like the armrest was some sort of a time/space vortex of rotten food, because every time I opened it I would find different horrifically expired food items. Though the food was different each week, it clearly hadn’t just been rotting since my peek last week. Let me try to explain that better: one week I’d open it up and see a black sandwich. The next week I’d open it up and see a cupcake with such intense mold that it HAD to have been rotting for longer than a week. Meaning, either some funky time hole thing involving the Doctor was going on where this was food from the future being transported back in moldy state or something, or this crazy bitch was INTENTIONALLY putting rotten food in her car. Then again, I think I’m the even crazier bitch for opening this armrest every week.
Again though, I’m not squeamish about a bit of mess or dirt involving food. If you ask me whether or not I have ever eaten from the floor a Skittle that someone had quite clearly stepped on, I will answer, “I plead the Fifth.” With that in mind, imagine the level of filth this car must have reached if it grossed even me out.
If you are retarded enough that I still have to explain that this car smelled like shit, you should probably stop reading and just go sit in the corner right now. No, accept it as a given that this car smelled like shit, but specifically it smelled like the taste you would get from eating chocolate and lemon together, and then having acid reflux. The worst part of all of it was when we would turn on the air conditioning (a necessity in LA!), and then directly into our poor, innocent faces it would spew out flavored air conditioning. Specifically, ass-flavored.
I don’t normally get carsick, but I used to get so sick from hurtling down the freeway in what smelled like the men’s bathroom at a curry restaurant. Even though I hated Hebrew School, once we arrived at our brick temple I would leap out of the car and run up the stairs, not giving one solitary shit that my school uniform skirt was flying up and flashing everyone in my desperate bid to get away from the Manky Mercedes. I’d pause in the hallway and try to steady myself, feeling as though if the teacher asked me to read a Chet (the “Khhhh” noise) then I would have no choice but to violently vomit over everyone.
Once the car-induced nausea wore down and I remembered that I was, once again and like every week, the only jackass(besides my brother) wearing a school uniform, the other kind of nausea would set in.
